


the garden that you planted remains

by emb_pface



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Nightmares, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emb_pface/pseuds/emb_pface
Summary: Nightmares are common enough. This headache though, Jyn could do without.





	the garden that you planted remains

Hot. It’s so hot.

She’s engulfed in flames. Her skin crackles and splits, fat already boiling underneath, sloughing off of her bones to hit the ground in wet smacks. She thinks she screams, but her neck is a mess of charred flesh and blood, fire already eating a hole through her throat. Limbs flail uselessly, tendons ripping and catching. Her stomach tears, acid overflowing, and the flames lick at her greedily as she burns up from the inside and out.

She’s burning alive.

She’s going to die here.

Flames crawl up her back and chest, gnaw at her spine. They’ll burn her to nothing and leave only the barest of ashes and bones behind. She’s going to die, she’s going to die, she’s going to–

Jyn hits the floor.

Wrenching her way out of sweat-soaked sheets, Jyn is up and slamming her way into the refresher before she’s even fully cognizant, bashing her knees into the ground as she heaves violently into the toilet.

She retches blindly, long after her stomach has nothing left to give, twisting into punishing knots as she spits up bile. Her hands creak, white-knuckled as she vomits, and she thinks she might have a bit up her nose, but she’s too busy being sick to truly feel disgusted.

Eventually, her stomach begins to settle, and Jyn coughs out a last pathetic mouthful. She keeps her eyes closed, resting her forehead on the bowl’s rim. Jyn distantly realizes she’s gotten a little on her hands, and her shirt will need to be laundered. More immediately, a migraine has skewered its way into her skull somewhere over her right eye, and she struggles to breathe evenly. She shakes where she sits, her body overwrought.

 Heat crawls up her face, down her chest-

No. No. Jyn grits her teeth.

_Breathe, Jyn._

Weakly, Jyn grinds her forehead where it lies, sprawling her legs out against the cold tiled floor, too cold against her overheated body. She ignores the shivers that skitter up and down her spine. She grips her necklace.

_In, and out. That’s it._

In her bunk, her chronometer beeps gently, reminding her that she has recruits to train in an hour. She ignores it.

_Breathe in._

She grips her necklace tighter.

  _And out, Jyn. In…_

She breathes in.

_And out._

She breathes out.

 

\---

She doesn’t look good. She knows. Not simply because she’d seen herself in the mirror that morning, but also because the recruits side eye her more than usual, concern clearly written on their faces. They’d make rotten intelligence agents, the lot of them.

Jyn clenches her scarred hands against her hips and hoarsely barks out exercises, swallowing hard and forcefully tamping down the queasiness that slicks like oil in her stomach. A glance at the chronometer on the wall tells her she still has two hours left until break, and Jyn has to take a steadying breath.

The four paracetamols she’d taken earlier had barely left a dent in her migraine, and she’d managed scant more than a bite of the morning rations. Her head pounds angrily, and Jyn digs her nails into her palms as the ice pick in her brain drives deeper.

She breathes in.

Two more hours. She can make two more hours.

She breathes out.

 

\---

She doesn’t make the two hours.

 

\---

A particularly vicious spike in her migraine sets off a chain reaction in her body. Jyn staggers in place, knees nearly buckling under her own weight, gasping harshly as her brain effectively blinds her in one eye. The sudden intake of breath on her raw throat makes her cough so hard her stomach seizes; she flees before she embarrasses herself. Jyn barely manages to stumble out of the training room before dry heaving once, and she clamps a hand over her mouth, brutally forcing down whatever has crept back up her throat.

On shaking legs, she bolts as fast as she is able into the locker rooms across the hall, lurching into the nearest stall and all but collapsing. The subsequent vomiting is even worse than this morning’s, empty stomach clenching on nothing after expelling the two bites she’d had. Her skull feels like it’s caving under the force of her migraine, and she clutches desperately at her forehead. The moan that bursts out of her sounds perilously close to a sob.

It’s too hot, it’s too cold, and then it’s too hot again, and Jyn feels like she’s being consumed. Her breaths shudder in and out of her as her insides war, and she damns her system for turning on her so.

She hiccups, and her stomach cramps so violently it stoppers her lungs, and fuck, fuck, she can’t breathe. Jyn gasps fruitlessly, hunched over the toilet, her head cracking in two, when someone slams their hand between her shoulder blades. Her breath explodes out of her in a cough, gagging as thin strings of bile drip from her mouth, a few reflexive tears sliding down her face.

A hand cups the back of her head, and she jerks against it as she feels the press of a hypospray against her neck.

“Steady, Jyn.”

Immediately, what felt like a gaping chasm in her brain shrinks to a smaller fissure as the cool medication spreads through her veins. Her limbs feel like wet paper towel rolls, as if they’d tear apart from their own weight, and her head sags heavily on her neck. The hypospray clatters to the ground as she feels a thumb rub a slow circle on her nape.

There’s only one person who would take such a liberty. He curses quietly behind her. “You’re burning up.”

Confusion and wariness grip her in turns. _Aren’t you supposed to be off-planet_ , she means to ask, but all that comes out of her mouth is a vaguely distressed noise as her head throbs furiously. It’s only when a paper towel gently wipes her face down that she realizes she’s long since closed her eyes, and jolts belatedly. Jyn would probably feel a lot more defensive if she weren’t so out of it.

“Shh, steady.”

Cautiously, Jyn is tugged away from the toilet, and she easily folds backwards into the hold she knows is waiting for her. She tucks her forehead under a scruffy chin and tries to breathe, but her lungs stutter as her temple pulses.

“Deep breaths, Jyn. With me, in,” he says, and Jyn feels and hears his lungs expand under her cheek. Haltingly, she follows. “And out.” Her breath is more a pained huff, and the hand on her neck resumes its steady caress. “That’s it. Again.”

The hand at the back of her neck is cool and soothing, an anchor through the pain. Jyn breathes with him, again and again, her brain beating a brutal tattoo into her skull, until she can manage to keep a pattern in her chest.

Slowly, slowly, small details start to filter in.

She becomes aware of the press of leather under her cheek, the scent of travel and sweat somehow not turning her stomach, comforting instead. He shifts minutely under her weight, and the scratch of beard overgrowth against her forehead is familiar, grounding. On the back of her neck, she realizes his thumb is still drawing measured, steadying circles. She sighs.

“Cassian,” she manages.

“Jyn,” he says.

Her hands have made their way to the zipper edges of his jacket, barely gripping at the hem. She’s not sure if her legs have fallen asleep or not; she can barely move herself as is, and the tiles are freezing and hard underneath her.

Distantly, suddenly, Jyn remembers she’s still in the bathroom. Below the leaden weight of her skin, a small, cold feeling of embarrassment curdles in her chest.

Her face must change, or he must feel it change, because he offers, “I have another hypospray.”

She doesn’t answer. Her head does still hurt, though.

His arms move a little, and they almost squeeze around her, briefly, gently. She doesn’t lean into it, but she’s not moving, either. “It’s okay. No one else is in here.” A pause. “Do you want me to call for a grav-stretcher?”

Jyn doesn’t respond. He knows the answer to that.

He sighs quietly, frustration coloring its edges. _Stubborn_ , he doesn’t say.

_Hypocrite_ , she doesn’t answer. “Okay. Another hypospray, it is.” He slips one out of his jacket and presses it to her neck. He pauses, a last second courtesy for her to disagree, but Jyn stays still, and he depresses the end into her skin.

Jyn takes in a shaky lungful of air, her body relaxing just a few degrees more, and shivers.

Cassian holds her a little closer. “And out,” he says.

She breathes out.

She follows his rhythm, steady and even and slow, and eventually, she forgets herself. Jyn quietly slips into unconsciousness, and leaves her body behind.

 

\---

Jyn startles awake. She’s—disoriented, she’s lying down? It’s dark. There are only hollow echoes of her migraine left, but her head is still heavy, stuffed with wool. She turns in place, feeling claustrophobic, tries to reach out and balance herself.

Another hand clasps hers. “Go back to sleep, Jyn.”

Her shoulders relax without a thought, leaning back into the bed. She turns her hand over and grasps the hand firmly. It’s cool to the touch, covered in familiar calluses. Jyn settles.

And she breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title was taken from "The Garden You Planted" by Sea Wolf.


End file.
